Until about 1983, all service stations or fuel distribution stations were equipped with distributors, more often of the single delivery line and at most of the double delivery line type.
Around 1984 there began to appear on the market multiproduct distributors incorporating from two to four fuels for four to eight distributing nozzles, and even more.
This new distribution mode provides the motorist with a possibility of choosing, at the one and same place, the fuel product corresponding to his or her needs, without compelling him or her to look for the lane having the pump distributing the fuel corresponding to his or her choice. This solution has really been well appreciated by the motorist.
Oil companies or other owners of service and fuel distribution stations have since then invested in multiproduct distributors for part of their main network.
However, there are still thousands of service stations or distribution stations fitted out with old fuel distributors the obsolescence of which, after a ten to fifteen year operation, is really overdue.
This situation compels the oil companies and other operators to urgently replace such obsolete equipment, but the hardships of the times are such that the oil professionals do not have the necessary budgets for investing in multiproduct distributors. Nevertheless, they are compelled to replace tens of thousands of fuel distributors, despite knowing that within four to five years they will have to scrap once more this equipment, although not already paid off, so as to convert little by little their entire network into multiproduct distributors if they wish to keep their customers by offering them a maximum of services.